Construction Worker Hurt As Concrete Slides, Pins Leg

February 15, 1986|By Jean Dubail, Staff Writer

A construction worker was injured seriously Friday when a half-ton piece of concrete piling slid from its foundation and pinned his left leg against steel sheets holding back the waters of the E-2 Canal west of Boca Raton.

The southbound lanes of Florida`s Turnpike were closed for nearly an hour while Mike Spence`s co-workers and Palm Beach County rescue personnel struggled to free him. The piling was lifted off -- 1/2 hours after the accident occurred -- by a 50-foot crane.

``Thank the Lord!`` one man shouted as he watched the piling swing free.

District Fire Chief Glen Kimberly said Spence, 39, an employee of C-Way Construction Co. of Edgewater, suffered a compound fracture just above the ankle. Had the chunk of piling struck him in any other place, Kimberly said, ``it could have just completely severed his leg.``

Spence was in good condition after surgery Friday night at Delray Community Hospital. Kimberly said he did not think Spence would lose the use of his leg.

The construction site is between the turnpike and the E-2 Canal about a mile south of Glades Road. The C-Way crew was preparing the footings for a bridge to carry the extension of Palmetto Park Road over the highway.

Spence and another worker, 25-year-old Joey Porter of Morgantown, Ky., were in a 6-foot pit cutting the tops off pilings that had been driven 6 to 7 feet into the soil. A curtain of steel sheets separated them from the canal.

The men`s task was to score the surface of each piling with a concrete saw so that the top could be snapped off -- much as a bottle would be scored to permit a clean break. Foreman Al Porter said the men may have cut too deeply on one piling, allowing it to break prematurely.

Porter managed to leap out of the way as the piling toppled. Spence did not -- his left leg was pinned against the steel.

``It was like someone took a great big sledgehammer and knocked her right off,`` Porter said. ``There was nothing you could do except move. I just moved a little quicker than he did.``

Porter`s knee was cut. Things happened so fast, he said, that he did not know whether it was the saw or the edge of the piling that hit him.

The force of the piling`s collapse also damaged the steel curtain enough that water began streaming from the canal into the pit. The water rose above Spence`s knee before pumps were started to keep it from going higher.

``He would have drowned for sure,`` Kimberly said.

Spence was conscious throughout the ordeal and occasionally flashed the thumbs-up sign to paramedics.

The first -- using small cranes to pull the piling to one side -- shifted it just enough to wring a scream of pain from Spence. The rescuers decided to try the larger crane, which had to be driven across the canal over a wooden bridge.

Workers tied cables around the piling and hooked them to the crane. The operator slowly took the slack out of the line and, with the lightest possible touch on the controls, hoisted the piling a few inches into the air.